


Dying of the Light

by Noscere



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, xcom 2
Genre: Aliens win, Bad Ending, Game Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 10:45:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6654898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avenger is overrun, and aliens have taken down XCOM's best and brightest. </p><p>Of all the regrets he could have had, following his Commander is not one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dying of the Light

**Author's Note:**

> An extension of the failed Avenger Defense cutscene. Bradford and Commander relationship urged on by really bad Reddit comments that made me laugh at 4 AM.

In the split second before the Muton charges up the ramp of the Avenger, time seems to melt into cracks of the Hologlobe. Bradford has many regrets. He shouldn’t have given up on the Commander. He could have drank less, and spent more time hunting his Commander down. He could have made better decisions during Operation Devil’s Moon. Hell, he could’ve been a better pilot, and instead of getting shot down somewhere over Mexico, he could have hidden the Avenger in South America and waited out the UFO.

Too late for that now.

“We’re overrun!” Kelly screams.

Just before her radio dies, it catches the roar of a Berserker, and the wet smack of crumpling flesh.

The last of their soldiers have fallen outside the Avenger.

The Hologlobe is plunged into darkness.

There is no one left but the engineers, the scientists, the Commander and the Central Officer himself.

 

“Shen, status report,” the Commander says, taking out a flashlight. The pale beam glances over the Hologlobe’s staff: drawn faces, brows tight with worry, fear seeping into the air…

There’s screaming below decks. Plasma fire. Alien chitters and grunts.

The Avenger rumbles. Battleships have arrived to the scene.

Everyone knows this is the end. 

ROV-R lies limp on the floor before Shen. She drops to her knees and attempts to access the Avenger’s mainframe from her little Gremlin. “I – they must be carrying EMP beacons, overriding the Avenger’s – there’s no power anywhere!–“

“Everyone have weapons?” the Commander asks.

A plasma rifle whines. “Damn it, it’s not working,” a technician mumbles.

Bradford kicks open a secret compartment. His trusty ballistic assault rifle falls out. He turns on the flashlight, and scans the weapons in the technicians’ hands.

Their plasma weapons are useless. There must be a Codex aboard, sending its purple psionic energy to disable their weapons. Ballistic weapons should still work, after the modifications Tygan and Shen did in case of another Avenger assault. Knives and machetes have always been effective in case of alien attack. Not that it makes their incoming death more comforting. Their enemies vastly outnumber them. XCOM has failed humanity.

Something crackles in the darkness.

Shen huffs in frustration. “The best I can do, Commander, is overload the power core and make this ship explode. I’m so sorry! I–“

“Don’t be,” the Commander says. “If it has to end this way… Central. Go with the men. Get them out of here.”

“Commander, there’s no way for us to evacuate.”

“We’ll try.” The flashlight shines over the technicians’ faces. “Everyone, split up into groups of two. Take your weapons, and get out of here. You know the evacuation routes.”

There’s a slight grumble in the air, dissent clear in each voice. A warm feeling swells up in Bradford’s chest. After all they have done together, they are a brotherhood born and forged in blood. Nobody wants to walk out while their brothers and sisters die in the mud behind them.

“Now,” the Commander says. “I don’t want you to die in vain. Get out there, and continue the resistance. Fight back against the aliens. Take our world back. You might be engineers, or scientists, but I know you can do so much more.”

Shen makes to protest.

“That means you too, Lily. Get Tygan, and get out.”

The thumping belowdecks grows louder. Plasma bolts scythe through the air.

“Evacuate, now!” Bradford says, adding his voice to the Commander’s.

The technicians scatter, carrying plasma weapons that will become useful once they escape the Codex’s area of effect. Judging by the look on Shen’s face, there are Codexes surrounding every inch of the ship. But Bradford survived twenty years on the run, skirting impossible odds – and he just barely dares to hope that somebody from XCOM will survive.

 

The Commander takes out a handgun and a normal grenade from another compartment, and freezes. “John.” His name hangs in the air. It’s the first time the Commander has ever used his first name. “The aliens. The Blacksite vial. If we die here… will we be processed?” The flashlight’s unsteady beam wavers. “Will… oh, God. They’ll put me back into the stasis suit. I’ll become their puppet once again.”

“Commander–“

Guns are singing. Blood is baptizing the Avenger once more.

“We can’t let that happen. They know I’m here.” Blue psionic energy wraps around the Commander’s forearms. “Now that we know I have the potential – they have known for twenty years. I can’t get out of here alive.”

“We can set the turrets to blow,” Bradford says hastily. He knows he can’t dissuade the Commander from this path. “It might buy the technicians some time.”

His commander marches over Shen’s abandoned terminal. Tendrils of light blue psionic energy sink into the screen. Ever since they built the psi lab, they knew the Commander was a psion: weak, but the potential still slumbered in his Commander. Everyone apparently has the potential to harness psionic energy. There's another regret - he should have learned to capture his own. He could have helped to defend the Avenger.

The screen lights up, but something is wrong. Electricity arcs off the screens and sinks into the Commander’s skin.

Something explodes outside. Two more explosions rock the ship. Aliens are screaming and shrieking. There’s too many of those damned monsters, circling the Avenger like vultures waiting for their prey to keel over. 

The Commander sinks to the floor.

“You should evacuate too.”

“Not without you,” Bradford says, going over to the terminal. He prepares to hoist the Commander up.

“The core is set to blow. They will not desecrate our men’s bodies.” The Commander’s eyes are hollow in the flashlight’s pale beam.

“You sent the men to evacuate.”

The Commander laughs. “They won’t make it. I did my best. But I… John, I’m so sorry. I’ve failed XCOM. I’ve failed humanity.” Bradford wraps an arm around the Commander. “This really is the end.”

Mutons’ grunts echo up the empty corridor leading to the Avenger.

“When is the core set to blow?” Bradford pulls the Commander up, and takes up his assault rifle. “We still have time. Come on, Commander.” His heart pumps hot and fast, raging against the death he knows is coming. His Commander is corpse-pale, as if the life has seeped out of the heart he has come to cherish. 

“Two minutes.”

"Then we've got time to get out of here."

It’s too late for regrets. Bradford has many of them, but managing XCOM and following his Commander are not two. He looks at the Commander who has guided them through the start of the alien invasion to the end, and he can only think _, I wish we had more time_.

 

“We can get clear,” Bradford says, guiding them to the escape hatch. Sectoids hiss and sputter below. Those aliens are manageable with simple bullets. It’s the Gatekeepers and Sectopods clanking outside that will give them hell. “Come on, Commander!”

“It’ll give ADVENT some nice flashy fireworks.” The Commander kicks the hatch open. The pistol is steady in those callused hands he knows so well.

ADVENT Troopers jabber outside the Hologlobe corridor. Time to go.

Bradford sprays the corridor below with bullets. PSI zombies groan. Sectoids chitter.

“Grenade,” he says.

The Commander pulls the pin, and tosses it below.

Bradford closes his eyes, but the light still almost blinds him.

“One minute,” the Commander says.

“I won’t let ADVENT take you back,” Bradford says as he drops to the floor below.

“No,” the Commander agrees. The pistol sings. His assault rifle barks. Bradford’s ears ring with the echo of gunfire and the screams of dying Sectoids. “They won’t.”

Plasma strafes through the air. One bolt hits Bradford in the shoulder. Another strikes his calf. He grunts – pain sears through the old wound, deadening his right leg.

The Commander reloads and fires. The Sectoid – arm still raised in a shot that would have punched a neat hole through his head with a well-aimed bolt of plasma – falls dead.

Bradford scans the corridor for more hostiles. It’s clear. The invaders must be going after the fleeing technicians. More deaths on his conscience, more sins to plead to St. Peter at the gates. Or is that how the story goes? Maybe he should have gone to church more.

“Come on, Commander,” he urges. Heat leaks through the Commander’s uniform, seeping through Bradford’s shirt sleeve. “Come on! We have to get clear.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Commander! There’s no–“

His Commander coughs, wet and rattling.

Bradford raises the arm that was around the Commander’s waist. It dips into the light of his assault rifle.

It’s wet with blood.

 

A Gatekeeper hums up the corridor, purple psionic energy leaking around its shelled body. Tentacles hover around its form. A wave of psionic energy roars towards them.

Bradford stumbles back. Everything hurts.

The Commander fires at the Gatekeeper. It reels, and the plates close up. But around them, the bodies of their men rise from the floor as PSI Zombies.

 _God, this really is the end_.

Bradford almost laughs. This is the ping-pong between death and despair, and hope and life; hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, that's the XCOM life for you. And he's even fighting at close range! He didn't learn anything from the original XCOM base. 

“Looks like it’s just you and me, Commander,” he says, trying to keep his tone light. “Seems like a fair fight. Twenty zombies, and two XCOM.”

“Sure does,” his Commander agrees. A weary smile creeps onto that quiet face. “It was an honor, John.”

“You too, Commander.”

His grip tightens around his Commander’s body.  

ADVENT troopers jabber in the Bridge above them.

“Twenty seconds.” Bradford holds his Commander steady. His gun is empty. There is nothing to offer the invaders but bravado. But he still has his body – he can give his Commander that. “Try surviving that, bastards.”

"Oh, they'll try. Probably disabling the core as we speak."

Plasma rains from above.

Bradford knocks the Commander to the floor, shielding his superior officer. He knows his Commander can’t be taken alive, but it is not the soldier who does this – it is John Bradford, Central Officer of XCOM, the man who spent twenty years searching for his Commander. And though it could damn humanity through his selfishness, he wants his Commander to live.

 

He can feel himself dying. It’s like he’s already floating, a thin tendril of spirit barely hanging onto the shattered body below.

“Ten seconds,” his Commander whispers.

Ten seconds pass. He doesn’t say his prayers, or beg for more time. He looks at the Commander beside him, still struggling to get up. The gun is still clutched tight in a bloody hand.

God, he would have followed his Commander to the ends of the Earth. 

The ship doesn’t blow up.

The ADVENT troopers drop to the ground. They kick his limp body away from their target.

His vision goes black.

A gun fires.

Fire consumes the Avenger.

 


End file.
